Pensioners complain about delays in payments from rural banks

Mr. Solomon Tawiah Yoneson, President of the National Pensioners Association of SSNIT, has urged rural banks not to take pensioners for granted by habitually delaying the payment of their monthly pensions.

He said the association would soon compile the names all the banks that delay in paying pensioners.

Mr Yoneson said this at a meeting with some SSNIT pensioners in the Upper West Region at Wa on Tuesday.

The visit of the leadership of the association to the region was part of a nation-wide tour being undertaken to share information and to brief the pensioners on issues that are relevant to them.

Mr. Yoneson said SSNIT releases money for pensioners by the sixth day of every month but information reaching him indicated that some rural banks used the money on other transactions thereby delay paying pensioners.

“We pensioners are being taken for granted. We have been in active service before so it is not a privilege but a right that we are pensioners”, he said.

Mr. Edward Ameyibor, the General Secretary of the association, said pension was not a death sentence as many people who were retiring from active service tended to believe and urged them to engage in productive ventures to supplement their monthly pensions.

He alluded to MacDonald, the owner of the famous fast food chain who started his business as a pensioner and became a millionaire, saying “do not give up you can begin life as pauper and end as a millionaire”.

Mr Ameyibor, a former President of the Ghana Journalists Association, spoke about benefits of the joining the association and expressed regret that only 40,000 out of SSNIT pensioner population of 90,000 belonged to the association.

Apart from the delays in the payment of monthly pensions, the SSNIT pensioners also raised issues such as the need for the banks to have a specific day for paying them, free ride in public transport and absorption of bank charges by SSNIT.

Source: GNA